


If Atolls Are Evidence

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [11]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 2017 French Presidential Election, M/M, Supreme Court Bullshit (Implied), Vacation, email, okay a little bit of sex this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:16:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Sometimes our brains and hearts need a respite.





	If Atolls Are Evidence

**Author's Note:**

> This one's mostly a flashback to the French presidential election of 2017, with just a little right-now bit at the end.
> 
> If you're curious, you can find notes about the political events that led me to write each of these Politics! stories [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JbdI1DieYfdR0i2zc1mheugKqdnJzEQKSPJvIE8O734/edit?usp=sharing).

**17 months ago**

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Enjolras says. It's a spur-of-the-moment whim of a comment. It's not the kind of thing he suggests. 

"MOMA's coming next week," says Grantaire, yawning into his beer. "Some bigwigs to check out the show."

"There are places where it's green right now. Just drenched in rain. Places where there's nothing to do but huddle in pubs and play dice with strangers who think American accents are exotic."

"I'm supposed to... Rahwa says I have to give a talk. About the show. About revolution, and art, and all that shit."

"Tiny mountain towns where news comes by foot, a week late and warped by the six different storytellers it went through on the way, where dinner's at sundown and then everyone sleeps till dawn."

"Obviously _you_ don't get it, Cicero. Some of us aren't cut out for an audience."

Enjolras looks up from the phone he's been side-eyeing this whole time, where his Twitter feed is blowing up in a way that's become disarmingly par for the course. A society in swirling tumult, and he's not at the epicenter—he's really, _really_ not, and especially this moment, when the epicenter's an ocean away, in Paris just nights before an era-defining election—but a lot of the time, it feels that way.

"I'm sorry." He's heard Grantaire, yes, but only the words, not the meaning; his mind's meandering frantically through the Irish countryside, through Andean villages, in hot pursuit of escape. He wants an elopement of a vacation. Maybe he can just leave it all for a while. Maybe _they_ can. "Sorry, you said...?"

"Yeah, uh." Grantaire looks oddly fidgety. "Yeah, can you help me figure out what to say?" 

Enjolras shakes his head. "Sorry, what? Did you say when?"

"Like, six days?"

Damn it. Dreams of isolation flit away. He's not trying to go on vacation without Grantaire. They've only traveled together once, and that wasn't even technically a vacation, but still. Enjolras shakes his head again, lets the absence of escapist fantasy settle heavily, once more, upon his soul.

"That's cool. Actually. I guess I should just do it myself, yeah?"

Grantaire seems kind of down. 

That's fair. At this particular point in history, who's not?

-

 **Lamarque:** When did you last take a break from work?

 **Enjolras:** January. Why?

 **Lamarque:** That wasn't a real break

 **Lamarque:** No one took vacation in January

 **Lamarque:** If there are rage tears, it's not vacation

 **Enjolras:** Lamarque's Law

 **Lamarque:** Take some time off, Enjolras

 **Enjolras:** But the speech?

 **Lamarque:** Don’t leave me hanging

 **Lamarque:** Write the thing

 **Lamarque:** Then go

-

 **Enjolras:** What's the closest and most satisfying vacation place to take a vacation

 **Courfeyrac:** Your bed

 **Courfeyrac:** [eggplant emoji]

 **Enjolras:** With Grantaire

 **Courfeyrac:** [two eggplant emoji]

 **Combeferre:** What are you trying to do?

 **Combeferre:** What kind of satisfaction, I mean

 **Courfeyrac:** [series of emoji: rooster; mouth; hands]

Enjolras has to think this over. None of his fantasies involved anything particularly _particular_ —no sightseeing or adventuring or gastronomic delicacies. Just time and distance and...

 **Enjolras:** The satisfaction of not thinking about my job

 **Enjolras:** Lots of sleep

 **Enjolras:** Some other kinds of bed-based satisfaction

 **Courfeyrac:** Yeah boyyyyy

 **Enjolras:** That's about it

 **Combeferre:** I don't imagine you're capable of not thinking about your job

 **Enjolras:** I might surprise you

 **Courf:** Narrator: He won't

 **Enjolras:** Fuck off

 **Combeferre:** What about Jehan's folks' place

 **Combeferre:** In the woods

 **Combeferre:** Remember?

 **Enjolras:** I've never been there

 **Courfeyrac:** Yeah, it was just us, Ferre

 **Courfeyrac:** Chateau Fantastique

 **Combeferre:** Not quite

 **Courfeyrac:** Magnifique?

 **Combeferre:** Can't remember

 **Courfeyrac:** Lunatique

 **Combeferre:** Just ask Jehan. They hardly ever use it

 **Courfeyrac:** You're in for a treat

-

Enjolras is expecting a tucked-away hidey-hole of a hobbit house, with rainbow pinwheels in the yard and flowers growing from the roof. He is, therefore, startled when the last of the winding private road opens into a little clearing dominated by a stately home that might be more at home on the senator’s street in the capitol than in this isolated stretch of woods. 

Grantaire turns off the car and the sounds fall away to be replaced by a tremendous stillness. There's still snow on the ground in patches here and there where the trees are far enough apart to have permitted its accumulation. There are probably birds somewhere, but Enjolras doesn't hear them. 

-

Maybe the fact that there’s a key-code should have been a clue. You might think people who hang a sign reading _Chateau Cosmique_ above the door of their vacation home would enter by means of a hand-carved wooden key concealed in a hollow tree, but no, Jehan told them the code, and sure enough, there's a little silver keypad installed above the doorknob.

Inside is quiet and grippingly cold. A staircase leads up; on both sides of the entryway, broad doorways admit handsome views into tastefully-furnished sitting and dining rooms.

Grantaire finds a panel of switches. The one labeled _Les Flammes_ ignites gas fireplaces in both rooms they can see, and probably several more, besides. 

-

Grantaire insists that they go out first thing. “A warm house is best when you’re cold,” he says, tugging on gloves and a wool hat. 

“I thought we were going to—” Enjolras casts a sad look backward at the generous fluff of the comforters that drape the guest room’s bed. 

“You brought a hat, right?”

“If I say no, do we stay inside?”

“If you say no, I put snow down your back.”

Enjolras digs out his hat, an extra layer of socks, his gloves, a vest, and a thick wool scarf. Out the window, the woods are quiet and blueish in the evening light. 

Underfoot, the woods are soft and springy, squashy enough in some spots that his boots want to sink into the thawing ground. Finding one snowfield the size of a swimming pool, Grantaire ran off hooting and cavorting and ran back hurling a well-aimed volley of snowballs right at him. He should have been prepared, but, caught up in the icy pine air in his lungs and the strangely subdued nighttime calls of high-up birds, he wasn’t. 

Now, as they walk westward, there is very sharp snow stabbing its way down his boots, and yet, the vast majority of his body is warm. 

He takes Grantaire’s hand with one of his and sticks the other into his coat pocket. His phone’s in there. He pulls it out.

No signal.

“Real-life wildmen,” says Grantaire. “Just living on the land, our wits and brawn all that separate us from the dripping jowls of the beasts of the night.” Enjolras must look as bewildered as he feels; Combeferre had said the place was remote, but how was he to know that meant _this_? Grantaire nods at the phone. “Airplane mode,” he says sagely. “Otherwise it won’t stop searching.”

“Oh my god, my email,” Enjolras says, toggling the switch in his phone settings. “Three days out of range? It’s gonna be ... hundreds? A _thousand_?” 

“Number-one way work fucks you over,” Grantaire says. “When it tricks you into thinking missing it is harder than being there. Maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from some shit.”

This is an intriguing thought. "That’s your strategy? Admit it: you just delete all the requests, right? In your email? For donations and petitions and..."

Grantaire is laughing. "Email?" he says, his face a visual definition of irony. "I? Me?"

"What? You're great at email." 

Grantaire writes him back faster than anyone. He hadn't expected it, and was pleasantly surprised—while castigating himself for underestimating Grantaire—when he caught a glimpse of Grantaire's zero-inbox when Grantaire was showing him something on his phone. Enjolras dreams of a zero-inbox existence, but there's no way that's happening this lifetime.

Grantaire shrugs. "I dunno. Wildman ethos. Fuck society.”

That flippant fillip in his voice unhooks a realization. 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, stopping. “You want me to read that speech?”

“You know there’s no speech.”

There’s always a speech. “We’ll get there.”

“Hold up,” Grantaire says. “Whoa.”

They’re nearly back to the house. The setting sun forms bright stripes of red-orange light through the trees. Suddenly, a dark shape slices through, followed fast by another, and another, dipping and swooping. 

“Shit, man.” Grantaire’s arm wraps around him. Together they stand close, cold through most of their bodies by now, watching the arc of these bats upward into a sky that darkens as they rise and goes brilliant in their descent.

Grantaire’s eyes have gone as black as oncoming night. “Take me inside,” he says.

-

Enjolras takes him in front of a fireplace, both of them shivering from cold before the shaking turns to shuddering expostulations. For some reason, Grantaire’s wearing one of his new work sweaters—a slim-cut merino crew-neck with subdued horizontal stripes—and it’s not just from concern that he tells him to keep it on. Through the wallpapered layers of irony, he’s starting to figure out when Grantaire is actually happy. Since the museum job started, that’s a lot.

Even though Grantaire’s thighs are flat and cold under his own, he stretches out atop him. Pressed together like this, they’ll make heat. Grantaire’s cock and nose curve up against him. He slides his cheekbone across the bony line of the nose; he thrusts against the cock. 

Grantaire’s hips push up. “You saw the sky.”

“Yeah.” His breathing is rough; so’s Grantaire’s, but on a different cadence so that the chest against him is an offbeat—or else his is. So hard to know.

“Your eyes,” Grantaire says, peering into them with intense fascination. “They’re the same—the same as the dark blue.”

“That’s not—” He wants to correct Grantaire. He wants to say it’s Grantaire who fit perfectly, Grantaire who, despite his lack of reputable wildman credentials, is endemic to every place he goes. But he can’t correct Grantaire because Grantaire is holding him by the ass so tight that their cocks can barely slide anymore, just shift in tiny slipping movements of skin over skin that, for all Enjolras is trying to rein himself in, each anticipated moment of friction looses a grunting gasp. 

His hips are jerking, Grantaire pulling him in small quick bursts. Grantaire’s cock always gets startlingly large at the end, and even without the everything else, that might be enough to get Enjolras off.

Grantaire is gazing at him in broad astonishment. His lips brush Enjolras’s lips, his jaw. He groans. “I’m gonna. Oh god. Come on me, Enjolras.”

Enjolras is just about there. He closes his eyes. Behind them, a striated sky.

He opens them. Grantaire.

—

**Tonight**

Grantaire is all the way inside him, and he's clutching the edge of the bed feeling Grantaire behind him and feeling himself held and holding. He wants to let go. He wants to let go, but he won't. 

“Fuck, Grantaire,” he says, his body sinking in now, into the edge of the mattress. He’s vanishing into a space in between—a space where he can belong to no one and nothing, where he can give himself over entirely, for these moments, to the storm-grey depths of the fuck. 

He backed out of the trip to D.C. when he got home last night; Grantaire was just in the living room, having a drink with Courf and ’Ferre, and Enj had ducked into the bedroom to look for flights.

The lightheadedness of the party clung to him; the hollow feeling he’d had at first had been supplanted by something almost pleasant. This was almost pleasant. His little cozy-roofed life, even in the path of the hurtling avalanche of destruction, _was_ pleasant. 

When he got back to the living room, he shook his head at Grantaire, who nodded and didn’t ask.

 _ **I can’t do it**_ **,** Enjolras emailed him from work in the morning—because if they weren’t going to get arrested, at least they might as well go to work. _**It feels like a long time since I took time off.**_

 **there was this spring?** Grantaire emailed back before lunch. **you wanna lie in bed all day tomorrow getting fucked up and getting fucked?**

Enjolras didn’t get the message till he was about to leave work; the afternoon was a frenzy of press releases and one-off talking points for the senator’s news-bite interviews. _**You are so unremittingly efficient at email.**_

Tonight at dinner, Grantaire showed him his phone. “You want to know why?” The email app’s open, the zeroed-out inbox still blindingly beautiful. 

“Click the filter folders.”

Enjolras tapped the screen. There were _Amis_ , _Fam_ , _Work_ , _Bullshit_. 

“You’re the only one who makes it into the inbox.”

And this, fittingly, is the only thought that makes it into the fucking now. Just the two of them in an empty space, together and holding on.


End file.
